


Unleashed Resentment

by Escalus



Series: Scott McCall's Shades-of-Gray Theater [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (maybe), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Friend Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Bad Friend Stiles Stilinski, Emotional Manipulation, Friendship, Gen, Maybe - Freeform, Post-Episode: s03e04 Unleashed, Satire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 07:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17055629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: The players of Scott McCall's Shades-of-Gray Theater take on how friendships can change, and what it means to take dramatic license.





	Unleashed Resentment

The lights come up on the Narrator, who is sitting on an over-stuffed chair, his slippered feet on a footrest. He is, in the exaggerated nature of the 1950s sitcom, mimicking the symbols of household tranquility.

“Oh, hello there!” He folds down the newspaper even though you could see his face already. “We here at Scott McCall’s Shades-of-Gray Theater have a tendency to concentrate on the deeper themes – matters of life and death, good and evil. It’s there that we explore the nature of the supposed black-and-white thinking that mars Scott McCall as a character!”

He lights the pipe but coughs because he doesn’t know how. “But not every decision is based on such extreme circumstances. Sometimes, it’s domestic drama that can hold our attention. Take this scene our actors will now reproduce, happening after the end of Unleashed.”

**********

Scott and Stiles were sitting in Scott’s living room doing homework. Even with a serial killer on the loose, even with Mr. Harris missing, they still had to turn in assignments. After all, life went on between instances of bloodshed and mayhem.

To be honest however, it was only Scott that was doing homework. Stiles was seething. He was looking down at this social studies worksheet and nothing was getting done. Scott was aware of this, because the scent was clogging the room. He tried to ignore it for as long as he could, because he actually had to get his homework done. 

Finally, he couldn’t put it off any longer. Stiles wasn’t going to get anything done until they hashed it out, and Scott couldn’t focus on his own stuff anymore either.

“Okay. What’s the matter?”

“I’m fine.” Stiles had this way of saying that particular phrase which indicated that not only was he not fine, but he was so _not fine_ that he was going to nurse it like a bruise. 

“Yeah. Sure. Liar.”

Stiles snapped his pencil in half. “What did you say?”

“I called you a liar, because I can literally hear your teeth grinding together. I can smell you being upset. You know I can do this, but you keep insisting you can lie to me anyway.”

“Stop smelling me!”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Scott complained and closed his book. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong or do you want me to guess?”

“Like you care.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Of course, I care. I just have to get my homework done and I can’t do that if I’m worrying about what’s wrong with you.”

“You could just ditch me again. I mean, you’ve done it for less reasons.” Stiles spat and clenched his fist.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not this again. I have never ditched you. Ever.”

“You ditched me all summer!”

“I went to summer school! I had work! You knew that! That’s not ditching! Ditching would be if I made plans to hang with you and I changed them at the last moment. Which I have never done.”

“That’s one form of ditching, yes, but there are other forms of ditching.” Stiles countered, triumphantly.

Scott worked his jaw. “I thought that there was only one type of ditching. I just thought it would be like if you got me to go to a party with you and kids from another high school, where I didn’t know anybody, and you disappeared when we got five feet inside the front door to go make out with a girl in the basement.”

Stiles’ jaw dropped open. “She was kidnapped and murdered.”

“If being adjacent to violence and danger is an excuse, then you can shut the hell up. You didn’t take it as an excuse when I hung up on you while you were in the pool.”

“I was the one in danger!”

“And I wasn’t? I was breaking into Gerard Argent’s safe with him downstairs. Unless you don’t think Gerard was dangerous?”

Stiles stewed on that. He had tried and tried and tried to make the hang-up Scott’s fault, but he had failed, because he would have done the same thing in his situation. He really couldn’t complain that Scott hadn’t saved him fast enough.

Scott could tell he hadn’t won the fight. “So you were bringing up other forms of ditching?”

“Yeah.” Stiles found his courage once again. “There’s ditching when you try to replace your best friend with someone else.”

“Who the fuck am I replacing you with?”

“First, it was Allison. Now it’s Isaac.”

“I’m not replacing you with anyone. That’s crazy.”

“It’s not crazy! You never listen to me. You take sides with Isaac against me.”

Scott rubbed at his eyes. “I listened to you when you said we had to dig up Laura’s corpse so we could put Derek in jail. I listened to you when you wanted to throw lacrosse balls at my crotch. I listened to you when you wanted to steal a police van for Jackson. I listen to you a lot, but sometimes I don’t, because sometimes you’re wrong. I didn’t listen to you when you insisted that Deaton was the alpha. I didn’t listen to you when you wanted me to let Derek die … I don’t listen to you when I think you’re wrong.”

Scott stood up. “As for yesterday, I disagreed with you and agreed with Isaac for twenty seconds. Twenty. Goddamn. Seconds. So, of course, you have to make a federal case out of it.”

“Well, I don’t have to make a federal case out of everything if you weren’t trying to find a new best friend!” Stiles screamed at him.

“Do you even listen to yourself?” Scott shouted back.

They stared at each other, breathing heavily. This was the point where either Stiles would break into tears, yet never admit he was wrong. Or this was the point where Scott would break down and say something like he couldn’t have Stiles mad at him. But right now, Stiles being mad at him was like number ten on the list of things he had to worry about, below Alpha Packs, serial killers, and algebra. 

“You know?” Scott sat back down at the table. “You’re right. I have been spending a lot of time with Isaac. I mean, even if he’s moved in here with me, it’s still wrong to expect you to share me with other people. What I was thinking, having other friends?”

“That’s not what I mean.” That was exactly what Stiles meant, because Scott was _his._ He just knew it sounded selfish and childish if he said it out loud. 

Scott was mad. He could tell his eyes were glowing. “But, you see, Stiles, Isaac does something that I’ve never experienced before. I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, but Isaac actually … _admires_ me.”

“What?” Stiles was dumbfounded.

“Isaac thinks I’m someone to be admired. It’s strange, I know. He never tells me how stupid I am. He never tells Derek or your father or our friends how fundamentally ignorant I am all the time or how I could never survive even for a moment without him. He doesn’t constantly bring up all the things he’s done for me and then mock me as an idiot. Not like you do.”

“Scott, I don’t do that. I don’t mean that. They were jokes.” 

“Ah, jokes. That’s make it okay. All these jokes at my expense, and you do it all the time, Stiles. I’ve scarlet-nerded you, right? You tell everyone how lucky I am to have a friend like you. That I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere or eating paste if you didn’t stoop to be my buddy. It gets old. Really old. So, yeah, I like hanging with someone who actually thinks I’m cool, rather than someone who uses me to prove to everyone else that he’s not a loser.”

Stiles stood there, open mouthed. It had never occurred to him that the constant barrage of ‘jokes’ against Scott might actually hurt. It was just his way of showing Scott who wore the pants in the relationship. 

“And then there’s Allison. She’s strange as well. Yeah, we’re not having sex anymore, but even when we were, she didn’t do things that I thought maybe she would’ve done. Strangely enough, she’d never hurt my feelings by hating on my tattoo after I told her how important it was to me. She’d never roll down the windows of his jeep to try to force me to talk to someone I didn’t want to talk to even after I asked them not to.” Scott was on a roll. Long suppressed anger at Stiles’ bullshit boiled to the top. 

“That’s just what we do, Scott. We tease each other.”

“Then how come it always seems like you’re the one doing all the teasing? How come when I try to tease you back, you act so fucking offended, like with my joke about Deaton making me have sex with all his clients. How come you get to act so fucking put off, but when I spend time with people who don’t constantly make fun of me, I’m ditching you?”

“I was worried about being a human sacrifice! You can’t blame me for that!”

“I don’t blame you for that.” Scott snarled back. “I blame you for getting upset that I like to hang out with people who don’t think they own me.”

“I don’t own you!”

“You sure act like it. You’re pissed off that I gave a homeless friend of ours a place to stay and that I have the nerve to do things with other people, even while you’re sitting in my house doing homework! Isaac doesn’t think that my life should revolve around him. Even when she was my fucking girlfriend, Allison didn’t believe that I should always do exactly and only what she wanted.” 

Stiles didn’t know what to say to that. He had been expecting to be angry, because that is how he felt. He hadn’t expected to be attacked when he was feeling neglected. He hadn’t expected that Scott would just as angry as he was. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you …” Scott hesitated. “I want you to be my friend, and that means that you need to treat me like I’m your friend. Treat me like a human being – and if you make a _joke_ that I’m not human, you can leave my house. Just stop treating me like I’m your personal superhero, that I’m your therapist, that I’m your emotional-support animal, or that I’m your stress toy. I’ll be there for you as much as I can when you’re hurt and when you need me, but I’m a real person, and while I’m your friend I also have a life outside of you, and I have to make decisions for me that don’t take you into account.” 

Stiles wanted to protest that he wasn’t doing any of those things, but when he thought about it – when he really thought about it – he couldn’t say that he hadn’t been. It had begun when his mother had died, and Scott was the only person to put up with his moods and his personality. It had been a blessing to have a friend like this, and they had fallen into a comfortable way of being with each other. But things have changed – Scott had changed – and Stiles couldn’t deny that his way of treating Scott hadn’t changed.

Stiles didn’t say anything, because he never said anything when he was wrong. He just sat back down and started on his homework, because that’s how they had done it. When Stiles was wrong, he acted like what had happened had never happened, and it was all good. He could try to do what Scott asked.

Scott looked at him. Maybe one day, he would try to force Stiles to actually talk to him like a human being, but today he’d just accept Stiles not being mad about some imaginary problem. It could be a start.

**********

“Slice of life can be entertaining!” The Narrator coos. “We present a little problem and we resolve the little problem and everyone lives happily ever after until the next big disaster.

“Now, remember, the purpose of our art is to present Scott as a little more realistic. A little more selfish. A little crueler. Shades of gray and all that. Because Scott never ever threatened his and Stiles’ friendship in the original tale.”

“And we did take some liberties with Stiles, because other than a rivalry with Isaac, he never accused Scott of ditching him – because Scott didn’t ditch him – and he was never so insecure that he thought Scott was replacing him. In fact, even as late as the dreaded Season 5, his greatest fear is that Scott and he would _stop_ being best friends. But sometimes, you have to manipulate the canon for dramatic license.” 

The Narrator waves. “So until next time, feel free to do the same. Oh, wait. You already do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fanon Stiles is a hoot, ain't he?


End file.
